Posted on 09/15/2011 8:55:58 PM PDT by quantim
NEW YORK (AP) -- A new book offering an insider's account of the White House's response to the financial crisis says that U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner ignored an order from President Barack Obama calling for reconstruction of major banks.
According to Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron Suskind, the incident is just one of several in which Obama struggled with a divided group of advisers, some of whom he didn't initially consider for their high-profile roles.
Suskind interviewed more than 200 people, including Obama, Geithner and other top officials for "Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and The Education of A President," which will be released Sept. 20. The Associated Press purchased a copy on Thursday.
The book states Geithner and the Treasury Department ignored a March 2009 order to consider dissolving banking giant Citigroup while continuing stress tests on banks, which were burdened with toxic mortgage assets.
In the book, Obama does not deny Suskind's account, but does not reveal what he told Geithner when he found out. "Agitated may be too strong a word," Suskind quotes Obama as saying. Obama says later in the book that he was trying to be decisive but "the speed with which the bureaucracy could exercise my decision was slower than I wanted."
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
Yet Geithner is still on the payroll.
Give Timmy a break.
At the time, he was perplexed as to why the Turbo-tax output was not computing with the amount that he wanted to pay in taxes. (Can I goose cheritables, how about more med miles, oh wait - big numbers if I don’t report foreign income, who would ever know???)
an order to consider? "OK, I considered it, the answer is no." Must everything be weasel words? Why didn't they throw in allegedly?
OTOH, perhaps the reason this wasn't a big blow out in the White Hut complete with rolling heads is that the order was illegal. Can't take Timmy's scalp when the defense is to expose the order.
If I were Timmy I would have laughed at Barky’s order.
The government does not have the power to “order to dissolve” a private corporation like Citigroup that is not in bankruptcy proceedings.
They only got that power for the government to legally take over “too big to fail” institutions in Dodd-Frank.
But why should Timmy think Zero knew anything about how a bank works? His only experience with banks was when ACORN would go invade a bank boardroom to intimidate them into making worthless loans.
And that's one of the principal failings of this POTUS. Every good leader knows that when something like this happens, you fire the guy at the top plus 20 other people associated with and/or supportive of them.
Then you triple-dog dare everyone else to try your patience again.
Make it happen. Put people in charge who will make it happen.
Fire everyone who resists.
It doesn't take long to turn an organization around if you know what you are doing.
He had Rahmbo to do the firings, and yet nothing happened.
More proof that Obambi the Deer Leader was in over his head from Day One.
>> It doesn’t take long to turn an organization around if you know what you are doing.
I agree. Same goes for the Country.
Geithner answers only to a higher power - Goldman Sachs
It is obama who is still on the payroll
Just another entry in the Obama book of excuses. Obama
never does anything wrong, it’s always someone else s fault.
It’s an apologist for Obama, wow, that never happens. ;’)
Thanks quantim.
One of the search engine hits on the author turned up a link about his appearance on the Jon Stewart show, and this:
Confidence Men:
Wall Street,
Washington, and
the Education
of a President
by Ron Suskind
Kindle Edition
Large Print Paperback
meme-building.
CARVILLE: OBAMA NEEDS TO PANIC, Fire Economic Team, And Indict Bank Execs
TBI | 9-15-2011 | Zeke Miller
Posted on 09/15/2011 5:38:28 PM PDT by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2779097/posts
For some time I have thought that the economic advisers were ignored. I think they realized that Obama wasn’t listening to them (Christina Roemer wrote on the danger of raising taxes, for example, before she was hired).
Notice how they all quietly beat feet back to the security of academia. I would bet cash money they put a large portion of their savings in gold, because they saw which way this was heading.
Geithner is the guy who got left holding the stick. He didn’t have a tenured position to fall back on, plus I think Goldman’s wanted him in there to clue them in.
It would not surprise me a bit if Obama thought he could just dissolve banks. He thinks he owns the country.
I think a few of you are forgetting that we could have shut down these banks because they were not adequately capitalized or used antitrust law to break them up given their monopoly positions.
That probably would have been the best decision Obama could have made since it would have introduced new dynamic players into the industry instead of the zombie government monolith banks we now have.
Many of you loathed TARP. What Obama apparently wanted done would have accomplished what TARP prevented the market from doing.
The biggest thing this story shows is that Obama is a complete puppet of Wall Street.
Big Sky told me this morning that he thinks that the green industry is nothing but a way to pay off donors. Probably true.
It's the Chicago Way.
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